Marc Scribner

Correcting Misconceptions about Autonomous Vehicles: Reason Magazine Edition

by Marc Scribner on May 10, 2013 · 4 comments

in Features, Mobility, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Regulation

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In the June issue of Reason, one of my favorite publications, Greg Beato has an article discussing the public policy implications of autonomous vehicles, such as Google’s Self-Driving Car. While I appreciate libertarians (being one myself) taking this technology seriously, Beato makes a number of questionable assumptions and outright factual errors in the piece. Here’s my quick attempt to address some of them.

Beato begins with obligatory Google-bashing common among techies, who seem to either love Google or despise it. (This is probably too simplistic, but this is how it looks like to a Silicon Valley outsider.) The legal issues with respect to Google’s collection of unprotected Wi-Fi data are complicated from a libertarian perspective, those related to Google’s settlement with the FTC “for bypassing privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser,” as Beato puts it, are not. No one’s privacy was ever violated. All Google was guilty of, as technology policy and privacy analysts here at CEI noted at the time, was

failing to realize a software tweak by Apple rendered one of Google’s help pages inaccurate. There is no evidence that any users were “taken in” or harmed by this inaccurate help page, nor does the FTC allege that Google knew or should’ve known that its help page was wrong. A four-commissioner FTC majority even admitted that Google’s alleged wrongdoing didn’t last very long or earn the company much money.

This is hardly the privacy-invading sin Beato implies it was, but he is obviously setting the stage for his arguments for additional public skepticism of autonomous vehicle technology.

But much of the beginning of the article focuses on the huge potential benefits of vehicle automation, which are large and which we at CEI have highlighted in the past. But at the halfway point, Beato drops this:

But is everyone really so eager to see the automobile, which stands as one of history’s great amplifiers of personal autonomy and liberty, evolve into a giant tracking device controlled by a $250 billion corporation that makes its money through an increasingly intimate and obtrusive knowledge of its customers?

Beato is correct that the automobile is one of the great technological liberators of mankind from the time-consuming drudgery that was previously associated with personal mobility. But the implication that Google is intent on destroying privacy protections by deploying a mobility-enhancing technology is over the top. Autonomous vehicle users in the future, just like users of any digital technology that transmits telemetric data, will be opting in. Google and other potential providers, in turn, will likely be responsive to privacy concerns. The real concern is the ability of law enforcement and other government bodies to access this private information.

But Beato instead makes questionable assumptions regarding technology that is not yet available to consumers, always a dangerous tack to take. For instance, Beato claims, “Even if it were possible to operate the car in some kind of ‘manual’ mode, you would likely still be sending information back to headquarters.” “Even if”? “Likely”? As far as the ability to operate a fully autonomous vehicle manually (i.e., not in autonomous mode), this will be standard. In fact, more than one of the four (not three, as Beato incorrectly states later in the article; they are Nevada, Florida, California, and Washington, D.C.) jurisdictions that recognize the legality of these vehicles (not where they are legalized – more on this in a moment) explicitly requires this feature.

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Government’s Chinatown Bus Shutdowns Based on “Statistical Malpractice”

by Marc Scribner on May 9, 2013 · 1 comment

in Mobility, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Reason’s Jim Epstein has an article up that does a nice job debunking a National Transportation Safety Board study, prompted by a 2011 bus crash in the Bronx that killed 15 people, that led the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to shut down a number of supposedly unsafe small bus companies:

In 1997, Chinese-born entrepreneurs began regularly scheduled long-distance bus services that picked up passengers on the street. Tickets were priced so low that it was hard to figure how the operators could be breaking even, much less making a profit. Faced with declining market share, Greyhound and Peter Pan imitated the Chinatown model by teaming up to create a new venture called BoltBus. Then Coach USA got into the game with Megabus. Today, “curbside” buses—lines that begin and end their routes at the sidewalk as opposed to a traditional station—make up the fastest growing form of intercity travel in the U.S.

But over the past two years, the government has forced 27 bus companies based in Chinatown to close. The regulatory clampdown was fueled by a government study that found curbside carriers were disproportionately killing their passengers. Released by the National Transportation Safety Board, a federal agency, the study concluded that curbside bus companies were “seven times” more likely to be involved in an accident with at least one fatality than conventional bus operators. That finding was reported by The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Businessweek, USA Today, the New York Daily News, WNYC, and Reuters, among others. Although the study did not single out Chinatown bus companies the headline in Businessweek read, “Chinatown Buses Death Rate Said Seven Times That of Others.”

The study is bogus. Not only is the “seven times” finding incorrect, the entire report is a mangle of inaccurate charts and numbers that tell us virtually nothing meaningful about bus safety. There’s no evidence that curbside or Chinatown buses are any less safe than any other kind of bus.

How did the study authors figure curbside bus companies are “seven times” more prone to fatal accidents? For starters, they counted 37 accidents during the study period involving curbside buses in which there was at least one fatality. When I rebuilt the study data and contacted the companies involved, I found that, in 30 of those 37 accidents, curbside buses were not involved. In fact, 24 of those 30 misclassified cases involved Greyhound’s conventional bus fleet. (Greyhound’s curbside subsidiary BoltBus had no fatal accidents during the study period.)

The National Transportation Safety Board denied my requests for the study data, even though it was a taxpayer-funded report with an impact on policy. After my Freedom of Information Act request also failed to return the information following a six-month wait, I began reconstructing the study data from other sources.

Proceeding on the time-honored hunch that people who are hiding something have reason to do so, I generated a list of the 37 fatal crashes using a database obtained from a federal contractor that collects nationwide accident data. I analyzed that data with help of Aaron Brown, a quantitative analyst with the hedge fund AQR Capital Management. Brown was the first to point out major flaws in the NTSB’s methodology in an article published by Minyanville.com, accusing the study authors of “statistical malpractice.” I also consulted with Ed George, a professor of statistics and department chair at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, who examined the study for the purposes of this article.

“When I first read the NTSB report, I thought this is just terrible statistics,” says Brown. “But it goes way beyond that. It’s almost as if someone took some random data and shook it together.”

Read the whole thing over at Reason for an overview of the NTSB’s incredibly sloppy study methodology. Cato’s Randal “The Antiplanner” O’Toole has more.

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Sorry, Progressives, But The ASCE Infrastructure Grade Boost Wasn’t The Result Of Obama’s “Stimulus”

by Marc Scribner on March 20, 2013 · 1 comment

in Features, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Zeitgeist

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I am generally very skeptical of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure,” as this self-interested group 1) gives the U.S. failing or near-failing grades, and 2) has a strong incentive to hype the “crumbling infrastructure” line since construction and maintenance — often with taxpayer dollars — is how their members put food on the table. Cato’s Chris Edwards and The Washington Post‘s Brad Plumer both highlight this fact. This year, ASCE gave America an infrastructure GPA of D+, an improvement over 2009′s D grade.

Ideological boosters for trillions of dollars in new federal infrastructure spending often prefer to ignore realities. Streetsblog’s Tanya Snyder, with whom I often completely disagree but who is generally a thoughtful Smart Growth advocate, highlights some of the ASCE report’s limitations. After all, these civil engineers constantly complain about not spending enough, but rarely do they focus on maximizing return on investment.

Now, Snyder and the rest of the anti-car, forced density gang don’t really care about return on investment (at least not in real measures of network efficiency) — but they do care a lot about where the money is going, specifically to ideologically preferred low-value projects like streetcars and bike trails. So, while I think this group of advocates is completely lost in the clouds, at least there’s a logical path you can follow to reach their incorrect conclusions.

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Will Regulators Fail To Learn From The Past Mistakes Of U.S. Railroad Regulation?

by Marc Scribner on March 12, 2013 · 2 comments

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Features, Mobility, Regulation

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The history of U.S. railroads provides an interesting case study on federal regulation. They were the first sector of the economy to come under heavy regulatory control and nearly went extinct because of it. Following enactment of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887 — which created the Interstate Commerce Commission — Progressive movement technocrats, populist farmers, and shipping interests demanded more and more regulation, often with the support of large segments of the railroad industry. Several decades took their toll, and by World War I, excessive regulation of railroads caused massive inefficiencies and soon led President Woodrow Wilson to nationalize the entire industry for the remainder of the war.

But industry conditions following de-nationalization were not much better. Time and time again, the only perceived solution to problems caused by failed regulation was more, not less, regulatory intervention. It is this dynamic I examine in my new study on railroad regulation, “Slow Train Coming? Misguided Economic Regulation of U.S. Railroads, Then and Now.”

Eventually, conditions got so bad in the railroad industry that it looked like it could not be saved. Following the 1970 bankruptcy of the Penn Central Railroad, the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history until it was eclipsed by Enron in 2001, fears of outright and permanent nationalization of the railroads began to grow. It was only then that policy makers began to seriously advocate for deregulatory policies. This culminated in the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, which largely deregulated the industry. Today, more than 30 years later, the railroads are booming. Shippers and consumers have enjoyed a 45-percent decline in average inflation-adjusted freight rates while the railroads have seen a more than 400-percent increase in rail employee productivity. This renewed prosperity has allowed railroads to invest heavily back into their own networks, to the tune of $500 billion since 1980.

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The Case Against The McDonnell Transportation Plan

by Marc Scribner on February 6, 2013

in Mobility, Politics as Usual

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan is on life support after two proposed alternatives died yesterday in the Senate. Only McDonnell’s plan, slightly modified in the House of Delegates, remains and the Senate is not very enthusiastic about it. The McDonnell plan would abolish the 17.5-cent gasoline excise tax and rely primarily on a sales tax increase for revenue instead.

Yesterday in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I explained in an op-ed why the McDonnell plan was both a step in the wrong direction for Virginia and a dangerous precedent-setting move nationwide:

To be fair, the governor is absolutely correct that Virginia’s gasoline tax revenue has stagnated. This can be traced to several factors. Since the 17.5-cent gasoline tax was last raised in 1987, inflation has eroded that revenue’s buying power by more than half. Cars have become much more fuel-efficient thanks to both federal regulations and changing consumer preferences, which means less revenue is collected per mile driven. Finally, and most importantly, recent driving trends suggest Virginia officials no longer can assume Virginians will continue to drive more year after year.

This does not mean revenue from the gasoline tax ought to be replaced by sales tax revenue. To do so would violate the longstanding highway funding principle of user pays/user benefits. Relying on users is the fairest way to fund highways. Payment is proportional — the more you drive, the more you pay. Charging users also ensures a reasonable level of funding predictability, because highway use does not vary wildly in the short run. And given that user-tax revenue roughly tracks road use, it provides an important signal as to how much infrastructure investment is needed to maintain a desired level of efficiency. Highway users pay, but they also reap the benefits of the resulting infrastructure investments and improvements.

Furthermore, relying on sales tax revenue is far riskier in the context of expensive, multi-year transportation projects that require stable funding. Virginians’ consumption of iPhones and dog food is a poor proxy of the commonwealth’s road use. Other jurisdictions’ large-scale use of dedicated sales tax revenue for transportation demonstrates this risk. In 2000, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began to be funded heavily by a dedicated sales tax. From 2000 through 2009, sales tax revenue grew at only one-third the rate initially projected. This only exacerbated Massachusetts’ existing transportation funding and management problems.

A better-balanced approach to transportation funding would center on preserving and strengthening the user-pays approach with modern technology and practices. All-electronic tolling should be greatly expanded, as it doesn’t face its technological ancestors’ collection cost disadvantage relative to fuel taxes.

Virginia pioneered the use of transportation public-private partnerships and should continue to be a model for the rest of the nation. Private financing and management are powerful and effective tools, which have the bonus of being taxpayer-friendly.

Vehicle-miles-traveled taxes are currently being studied but still face many unanswered questions relating to cost, equity and privacy. This alternative plan also would involve keeping the gasoline tax flat and allowing it to follow its natural course into obsolescence and eventual abolishment.

Read the whole thing here.

LaHood Out At DOT, But Is There Hope For A Qualified Transportation Secretary?

by Marc Scribner on January 29, 2013

in Features, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Regulation

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After months of confusing double-talk on whether or not he would stay on in a second Obama term, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced he would be resigning once a successor is selected. I’ve expressed in the past my distaste for LaHood’s management, noting that he lacked the qualifications one would like to see in a transportation secretary.

Aping George W. Bush’s selection of Democrat Norman Mineta, President Obama appointed Republican LaHood as transportation secretary. Unfortunately, unlike Mineta — who had a fairly strong transportation policy background in Congress (where he chaired the House Transportation Committee and spearheaded the first post-Interstate highway bill) and the private sector — LaHood’s only transportation experience was a five-year term on the House Transportation Committee. Before leaving Congress, LaHood was best known as a major pork-barrel spender, which if anything made him even less qualified for the top DOT spot during the post-earmark Congress.

LaHood is a big spender at heart, and not much else, which is why it should not be surprising that his four-year term as head of the Department of Transportation was marked by absurdly wasteful programming, such as the TIGER “livability” grants, increased passenger rail subsidies, and a “distracted driving” sideshow. Secretary LaHood and the Obama administration were out to lunch for the most significant transportation policy battle during his term, the reauthorization of surface transportation law. After the Obama administration came out with a transportation policy proposal completely lacking in seriousness, Congress ended up crafting and passing the MAP-21 highway bill, which did nothing to resolve the structural problems facing federal surface transportation policy.

While “Good riddance!” was my first reaction to LaHood’s resignation announcement, the most likely successor — professional political climber and current L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – is even less qualified for the job. But picking Villaraigosa would continue President Obama’s general ignorance and acquiescence to clueless special-interest activists on matters of transportation policy. It is just a sad fact that slick, photo-op politics trump sensible policies in the Obama administration.

ADDENDUM: Villaraigosa has taken himself out of the running.

TSA’s Body Scanner Shuffle Continues, Agency Still Flouts The Law On Body Scanners

by Marc Scribner on January 18, 2013 · 1 comment

in Features, Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Privacy, Regulation

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A great deal of news coverage today has been given to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to remove backscatter X-ray strip-search machines from U.S. airports and to replace them with millimeter wave full-body scanners, with many outlets implying that this is somehow a major win for travelers and those concerned about effective air security and privacy rights. This analysis, however, ignores the bigger underlying issues, as well as recent TSA policy.

This shuffle actually began in October of last year, when the TSA announced it would begin replacing backscatter machines with millimeter wave machines, which run on software capable of producing “gingerbread man” depictions of customers rather than nude images. Then a subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recognized that this shuffle failed to address core criticisms of body scanners broadly and held a hearing on the matter in November. What happened today is that the TSA is ending its contract with OSI (parent of Rapiscan Systems), manufacturer of the original whole-body scanner, because OSI was unable to meet its deadline to come up with software capable of generating the newly required “gingerbread man” passenger depictions through its backscatter X-ray machines.

It is important to keep in mind that this technology was originally developed and marketed for the purpose of protecting high-security environments, such as prisons and sensitive government installations. It was only after the U.S. was swept by a wave of irrational paranoia following the September 11 terrorist attacks that anyone seriously considered putting whole-body scanners in airports — and treating air travelers like prisoners.

The core issues that TSA has repeatedly failed to address began with TSA’s flouting of the law that required them to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. Public and expert comments were never solicited and never taken into account before the TSA began purchasing and deploying these machines. It remains to be seen if they are at all effective in reducing risks to air traveler safety, let alone if these potential risk reductions justify the privacy-invading airport security policies that the United States foolishly adopted after 9/11.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit against the TSA’s illegal deployment of whole-body scanners. A court later ordered that the agency was in fact in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that it must open the required notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding. A year after the court’s order, the TSA still had not complied. EPIC petitioned for a writ of mandamus in an attempt to force the agency to promptly begin the proceeding they are legally required to conduct. The Competitive Enterprise Institute led a diverse coalition supporting EPIC’s petition, filing an amicus brief on the coalition’s behalf. The court rejected EPIC’s mandamus petition, but in doing so effectively set a timetable for the TSA to begin its legally required rulemaking proceeding. The TSA is obliged to announce the proceeding no later than the end of March.

In August, former American Airlines Chairman and CEO Robert L. Crandall and I coauthored an op-ed explaining why the TSA’s use of scanners is both illegal and likely just another cog in the federal government’s growing apparatus of counterproductive aviation security policies. For instance, due to nonsensical and offensive post-9/11 airport security theater, many short-haul travelers have abandoned flying and taken to the far more dangerous roads. Three Cornell University economists have estimated that 500 additional annual road deaths can be attributed to this phenomenon. Have that TSA’s porn-and-grope airport security policies prevented more than a full 747 of airline terrorism casualties every year? I find this highly unlikely given the rarity of terrorism, and especially air terrorism.

What is the takeaway here? While it is true that the millimeter wave scanners coupled with the “gingerbread man” software are less intrusive than the backscatter X-ray machines they are replacing, the underlying problems with whole-body imaging such as the lack of sound, risk- and cost-based security policy and the TSA’s continued lawless behavior remain unaffected.

Virginia’s Uranium Mining Moratorium Should Be Buried, But What About Property Rights?

by Marc Scribner on January 16, 2013

in Economy, Environment, Features, Natural Resources, Private Conservation, Property Rights

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The earth below the United States contains 5 percent of the world’s known recoverable uranium deposits. More than a quarter of U.S. uranium is found in southern Virginia at Coles Hill near Chatham in Pittsylvania County. The two uranium deposits at Coles Hill are valued at $7 billion and together constitute the seventh largest deposit in the world.

Yet all of it is still in the ground. Over 30 years ago, Virginia placed a moratorium on uranium mining in the state. This prohibition was to be lifted once the state went through the arduous process of drafting uranium mining regulations. Unfortunately, Virginia never got around to writing the rules and the “temporary” ban is still in place. The property owners at Coles Hill and some outside investors formed a company in order to mine uranium once the moratorium is lifted and the onerous regulations recommended by the Uranium Working Group [PDF] are promulgated, but still face stiff opposition from the sadly typical alliance of anti-development environmentalists and ignorant NIMBYs.

This underscores the problem with relying on unreliable and arbitrary regulatory regimes for the ostensible purpose of protecting residents and the environment. Few dispute that responsible, safe uranium mining is possible and indeed practiced throughout the world, especially in major uranium-producing countries such as Australia and Canada. Instead of increasing regulation on mining, however, a more thoughtful approach would focus on strengthening property rights so that those doing the mining face incentives to extract natural resources without harming adjacent property owners.

Robust private property rights — those which are well defined, well defended, and voluntarily transferable — are the most critical underpinning of any free society. It should not be surprising that they are also the best tools to protect others and the environment from potential hazards. (For a brief discussion and defense of free-market environmentalism, see “Liberty, Markets, and Environmental Values” by Mark Pennington.) Pollution in this context constitutes a trespass against those rights and the injured owner can file suit to halt harmful activity and collect damages. But relying on the regulatory state in an attempt to protect the environment essentially grants polluters additional rights while preventing property owners from exercising their rights to defend their own property from pollution. This false commons is forced upon society by government and the predictable tragedies result again and again. Unfortunately, these state-caused disasters often only embolden far-left environmentalists in their calls for doubling down on failed regulations.

A firm engaged in uranium mining under state and federal regulations has the incentive to follow the regulations to the letter, regardless of how arbitrary or counterproductive they may be. In contrast, robust property rights would incent miners to allocate resources efficiently (after all, pollution is just a form of waste), take immediate risks into account, and prevent expensive trespasses against neighbors.

While this vision of a free society is far different from our current reality — meaning a complex regulatory regime will be practically necessary for uranium mining to take place in Virginia anytime soon — it is important to remember that it is an absence of liberty, rather than an excess, that increases harm done to people and the environment in the first place.

Feds Say Hybrid Electric Vehicles Too Quiet, Noisemakers Should Be Mandated

by Marc Scribner on January 7, 2013 · 4 comments

in Features, Mobility, Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

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Green paternalists often gush about the great potential for hybrid electric automobiles to reduce negative externalities, or social costs, such as local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that result from driving. In addition to classic externalities such as crashes, congestion, and air pollution, excessive noise is also one form of social cost, albeit a relatively small cost — remember the “whistle tipped” modified exhaust pipe video that went viral several years ago? The Federal Highway Administration has estimated that noise externalities average 0.06 cents per mile for cars and light trucks, while a paper by Mark A. Delucchi and Shi-Ling Hsu arrived at an estimated cost of 0-0.4 cents per mile. To put this in auto-externality perspective, crashes (which account for three-quarters of automobile social costs) average something like 15 cents per mile.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now moving in the opposite direction, and will soon begin a regulatory proceeding that will require that hybrid and electric vehicles emit sounds when they travel at low speeds (this would mean an audible alert whenever the vehicle is started and still stationary, in reverse, or traveling under 18 mph). Presumably, this is to benefit the blind, although NHTSA reveals in its own benefit-cost estimates that bicyclists will benefit more than pedestrians, and cycling is generally not a viable transportation mode for those with poor or no eyesight — not to mention that cycling has a much smaller travel modal share than walking. To many, this would indicate that this isn’t much of a problem in the first place and we live in a world of ever-changing risks best addressed by markets, but those who think as much generally don’t opt for careers as government regulators or special-interest lobbyists.

NHTSA has found that hybrid electric vehicles are more likely to be involved in certain pedestrian or cyclist accidents and says we can expect to save a few dozen lives nationally per year once the regulations come into full force (doubtful). So what do we know about pedestrian and cyclist fatalities when automobiles are involved? The vast majority of pedestrian or bicyclist injury events do not involve motor vehicles. Furthermore, in roadway accident settings, more than half of cycling and about one-third of pedestrian injuries do not involve motor vehicles — meaning that the most serious threats facing many pedestrians and cyclists are their oft-inattentive selves. We also know that pedestrians and cyclists involved in accidents with motor vehicles are far more likely to be intoxicated than those involved in accidents without motor vehicles. It should not be surprising then that a disproportionate number of fatal accidents (as opposed to injurious accidents) involve intoxicated pedestrians and cyclists.

These federally mandated noisemakers will likely do little to save drunk, stoned, iPod-listening pedestrians and bicyclists from their own stupidity inattentiveness. A small class of pedestrians and cyclists may certainly benefit at least initially, although regulation risks locking in inferior technology even once some better safety method or product is developed by automakers. But if we must have this silly nanny-state micromanagement, I hope our regulatory overlords have the sense of humor to make something like this the mandated hybrid alert sound. Unfortunately, NHTSA is not thinking very creatively about the sound possibilities.

Update On D.C.’s Driverless Car Legalization Legislation

by Marc Scribner on January 4, 2013 · 2 comments

in Mobility, Regulation, Tech & Telecom

In November, I noted in The Washington Post and here on Open Market that a bill introduced in the D.C. Council contained two dangerously flawed provisions and another unnecessary and overcautious provision. Basically, the original bill 1) nonsensically mandated that autonomous vehicles operate using alternative fuels, 2) established a special tax that would further reduce consumer purchases, and 3) required that a licensed driver be in the driver’s seat of the vehicle during autonomous operation, which is unnecessary and will restrict potential testing and functionality (admittedly, this is far less severe than the first two).

Good news! The bill was amended with the most troubling provisions (1 and 2) removed [PDF] and it unanimously passed its final reading before the Council on December 18.

D.C. will soon join Nevada, Florida, and California as jurisdictions that have explicitly legalized autonomous vehicles. There are few laws and regulations that explicitly ban the operation of autonomous vehicles in the United States, making them technically legal virtually everywhere provided a licensed driver is in the driver’s seat. But these legalization efforts are important to both send a positive signal to potential developers and establish a framework to address public policy and legal issues that will arise as consumers begin to adopt autonomous vehicles. Bryant Walker Smith, perhaps the foremost expert on the law as it relates to autonomous vehicles, recently authored a fascinating paper that explores these issues in great detail. For those who want a brief overview, see Smith’s article in New Scientist.

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